Few spectacles have been more surreal than senior US
officials – starting with the President, the Secretary of State and the
US ambassador to the UN – solemnly lecturing Assad and his beleaguered
Syrian government on the need to accommodate rebel forces whose GCC
sponsors are intent on slaughtering the ruling Alawite minority or
driving them into the sea.

At one grimly hilarious moment last Friday, these worthy sermons were
buttressed by a message from Ayman al-Zwahiri, the head of al-Qaeda,
therefore presumably the number one target on President Obama’s hit
list, similarly praising the ‘Lions of Syria’ for rising up against the
Assad regime. Al-Qaeda and the White House in sync!

The last time the United States faced serious internal dissent was in
the 1960s and early 1970s, from war resisters and black and Native
American movements. The government responded instantly with a methodical
program of violent repression, including a well-documented agenda of
assassination.

In 1993, the first year of the Clinton administration, federal agents
launched an armed assault on a religious group in a compound outside
Waco, Texas. The Feds deemed the compound and the Branch Davidians
therein, headed by David Koresh, an affront to their authority.